*Rating Scales

Hope is a powerful emotion that has been largely neglected by the social sciences. In this paper, we introduce a theory of hope drawn from multiple disciplines, including psychology, philosophy, theology, and medicine. Our integrative approach features four components: the attachment, mastery, and survival motives, as well as spiritual beliefs. In addition, we describe four different empirical analyses aimed at the development and refinement of a comprehensive set of scales for measuring state and trait hope.

The psychological relevance of private prayer is an important area of inquiry, with researchers examining prayer typologies and prayer’s associations to mental health (e.g., Poloma & Pendleton, 1989, 1991). However, many of the field’s measures are limited by the use of predominately Christian samples for scale construction. The utility of Poloma and Pendleton’s (1989) Prayer Types Scale, proposing a 4-factor prayer typology, has not been validated in non-Christian samples.

Most measures of spirituality privilege religious spirituality, but people may experience spirituality in a variety of ways, including a sense of closeness, oneness, or connection with a theistic being, the transcendent (i.e., something outside space and time), oneself, humanity, or nature. The overall purpose of the present 4 studies was to develop the Sources of Spirituality (SOS) Scale to measure these different elements of spirituality.